This Christmas Day, social distancing etiquette restricted our non-media social contact to a walk with Richard and Jenny. We chose Jen Darling's 'Appleton' walk from her 'Walks in West Cheshire and Wirral' book. I wrote about this back in September - described here - so this is basically a small collection of images by which to recall our current outing, which was on a lovely clear frosty morning (more of these, please).
Our first pause in the walk was to cross the road to look at the double-faced sculpture of the Roman god Janus, atop a sandstone column.
Here, there were good views today over the Cheshire countryside in the low sun.
After passing numerous empty and eerily silent duck houses on the way to Bellfields Farm, we turned left at the farm, down Park Lane, passing a golf course and another farm before reaching Appleton Reservoir, a haven for wildlife.
We were grateful to the hard frost that had stabilised what would have been a very muddy walk around the reservoir just a day earlier or a day later.
Hough's Lane took us down to the Bridgewater Canal, but not before we were held up briefly by this cherry picker.
The local farmer uses a drone to monitor her livestock, and unfortunately it had got stuck in the top of a tall tree. Rescue was imminent.